“Stage 3: Nobutaka Aozaki, Transportation” Exhibition
The International Studio & Curatorial Program
[Image: Nobutaka Aozaki "Transportation" (2016) digital rendering. Courtesy of the artist]
This event has ended.
Transportation, by Nobutaka Aozaki, deals with an object’s displacement, and time-based debt. A deceptively simple demonstration of the arbitrary nature of commodity exchange value, the exhibition involves the rental of a common-use object—a Citi Bike—and its re-situation in another sphere. The display of the bicycle on Staging’s white platform alters its commodity status, while further complicating its worth due to its new role as art object. Over time, the value of the exhibited work might be said to increase, quasi-proportionate to the artist’s simultaneous accrual of debt. Transportation expands on Aozaki’s sustained practice of researching variations of commodity circulation and alternate systems of human and economic exchange.
During ISCP’s weekly exhibition hours (Wednesday-Friday, 12-6pm) Aozaki will continuously rent, exhibit, return, and re-rent a Citi Bike from the closest nearby dock at the Grand Street subway station. While attempting to mitigate overage charges, the artist will inevitably incur fees, pointing to the ever present clock, that form of monetary measurement. Transportation also refers to a system of leasing stacked against the short-term renter. The many exchanges undertaken throughout the exhibition are presented on-scene, considered to be both exhibition documentation and a running tally of debt. In its role as the object of display, the Citi Bike enjoys an additional sense of value through its exclusive and elevated placement on the plinth; its prominent branding ironically identifies other, less positive, associations.
Aozaki is providing an added service, free of charge, that expands the project beyond ISCP’s gallery space. Visitors are invited to accompany the artist on a trip to return and renew the bike. Contact stagingexhibitions@gmail.com to schedule an appointment.
In a penultimate closing ceremony and reception, on February 11, Aozaki and curator Rachael Rakes will discuss the unfolding of the project over its three-week run.
Staging is a program of seven exhibitions organized by seven curators that uses a single, white platform as its operative structure. This structure is the orienting environment for monthly stages produced via collaborations between an artist and curator. Staging is a co-production of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) and the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) and runs from November 2015 to June 2016. Organized by Benjamin Austin, Christian Camacho-Light, Rosario Güiraldes, Emma James, Humberto Moro, Yanhan Peng, and Rachael Rakes from CCS Bard.
Nobutaka Aozaki is a New York-based artist born in Kagoshima, Japan. He completed his MFA at Hunter College in 2012. He has been awarded the Artist Files Grant from A Blade of Grass Foundation, and the Artists’ Fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts. Recent exhibitions include Crossing Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, New York; Queens International 2013, Queens Museum, New York; What is the Real Value of Wealth, Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia; Tina, SPIKE, Berlin; and Where Do We Migrate To?, Varmlands Museum, Karlstad, Sweden. He has participated in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture program, the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and LMCC Swing Space residency program. He is currently in the Queens Museum Studio Program. His work has been recently discussed in Spike Art Quarterly, The New York Times, The Atlantic Cities, The Huffington Post, ArtAsiaPacific, and Cabinet Magazine.
Rachael Rakes is an independent curator and critic. She is currently the Programmer at Large for Film Society of Lincoln Center, Film Editor for the Brooklyn Rail, a consultant for Verso Books, and a Masters Candidate (2016) at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. Rakes has published criticism and essays on art and film recently in Artforum, Art-Agenda, Art Papers, BOMB, Hyperallergic, Film Comment, Frieze, and Sight & Sound. She is a Program Advisor for the documentary arts space UnionDocs, former Assistant Curator at the Museum of the Moving Image, and a former curator/co-owner at Heliopolis Project Space in Brooklyn. With Leo Goldsmith, Rakes is at work on a book about filmmaker Peter Watkins, for which they received a 2014 Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Media
Schedule
from January 27, 2016 to February 12, 2016
Opening Reception on 2016-02-11 from 18:00 to 20:00